News&Observer: Five death row inmates seek new sentences

On the heels of two expansive studies completed by Michigan State professors and University of Colorado at Boulder professors, lawyers for five death row inmates have started the first wave of appeals for death row inmates to be re-sentenced under the Racial Justice Act. The studies focused on the race of the jurors for those sentenced to death and on the race of their victims, respectively. Death row inmates and their lawyers can use statistics provided by the aforementioned studies to file a motion to have their sentence commuted to life without parole. District attorneys across North Carolina are preparing for motions to be filed by every single death row inmate of the 159, before the August 10th deadline.

An additional News&Observer article citing the freshly completed study by Michael Radelet and Glenn Pierce on Death row inmate’s victim’s race as the statistical evidence that will ultimately prove racial bias: